


memories for sinking ships that never would be saved

by janie_tangerine



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet, Explicit Sexual Content, Ghost Sex, Ghosts, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Past Abuse, Past Character Death, Past Sexual Abuse, Past Torture, Poor Theon, Post - A Dance With Dragons, Robb Stark is a Gift, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2017-03-20
Packaged: 2018-10-08 12:45:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10386927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: He supposes he should be glad that it’s Robb haunting him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So, fact is: I was looking through my old stuff and stumbled into this document with stuff written for the summer 2011 porn battle and found this thing which I had totally forgotten about - like I wrote it the week after finishing reading adwd but then I didn't have the guts to post it because I wasn't sure I had the characters down, then I forgot I ever wrote it and now I found it again and... I realized it was actually decent and I'm trying to repost everything I have already finished but not shared in my HD so here you go guys, this is the first throbb fic I ever wrote period. Most probably the first asoiaf fic I ever wrote period even if I hadn't published it back in the day. Hopefully you'll enjoy the trip down memory lane and it doesn't sound as dated as it actually is. ;)
> 
> On to the usual disclaimers: I own nothing and the title is from the Gaslight Anthem as usual, and now I'll saunter back downwards.

He supposes he should be glad that it’s Robb haunting him; it’s a less painful presence than Ramsay would have been.

Theon imagines that if a supposedly dead person appears next to you whenever you’re alone and talks to you, it’s haunting, but… it doesn’t strictly feel like that. Mostly because Robb doesn’t seem interested in making his life more miserable than it already is; he just _stays there_ and talks once in awhile, about nothing special.

It doesn’t make things easier, though; either it forces Theon to remember how it used to be between them, or it forces him to remember who’s alive out of the two of them, and it’s not the right one.

“You’re dead,” Theon says at some point, weeks after Robb appears for the first time.

“You’re dead, too,” Robb replies, but it doesn’t sound as if he’s trying to make him feel bad; it sounds like a truth, and Theon knows that Robb is right. Or at least, the person he was _before_ , is most definitely dead.

Theon doesn’t say anything else and Robb stays silent.

\--

There are things Theon tries not to think about, because if he does then he remembers that it’s not likely he’ll have them again. But he remembers times when he and Robb had fallen over each other while sparring in the yard, he remembers about the both of them sometimes hiding in the stables and pleasuring each other with their hands only (it was a game back then, just a game, even if Theon was older and knew something more about what he was doing). He remembers a few heated kisses that had ended up with split lips. It wasn’t serious, both of them knew, but it felt good and they didn’t have to worry about anything, did they?

(After all, Theon used to think, _he_ won’t be the one killing me if it comes to that. Now he thinks, _I was the one who killed him_.)

“I never wanted it to end the way it did,” he says one day. Asha won’t hopefully come search for him just now. “I know it’s worth nothing.”

Robb smiles, just slightly. “It’s something.”

That answer makes Theon sure that he _is_ going insane. If it really was Robb, he’d have said, _that’s it, it’s worth nothing, I’m still dead and you’re still here._

There’s poetic justice somewhere, though; because Robb is still young and beautiful, red hair shining in the sun, his eyes still clear, while Theon – his missing fingers are hardly the worst. It’s such a pity that he’s still here and won’t ever be the same as he was again, and Robb is gone when he could have had a glorious future in front of him.

“I should have died with you,” he tells Robb a while later. It’s the truth. “I wish I had. My place has never been anywhere else. I just wish I could have told you before.”

Robb’s smile is so sad that Theon has to close his eyes; when he opens them again, Robb is still there but closer.

“Better late than never. And you know, I blamed myself, too.”

“Why would you even do it?”

“I was the one sending you off. I should have realized it was a bad idea.”

“You should be here, not me.”

“Few people wouldn’t agree with you. But maybe you shouldn’t feel too compelled to join me, or wouldn’t it be a waste?”

“A waste of what?”

He’s better, though anything would have been an improvement; he put on some weight, Asha found him a maester to fix what he could of his teeth, and his hair isn’t as thin and gray anymore even if it’ll never be as dark as it used to. He _could_ use a bow, but he can’t run anymore so it’s useless; if he died, it wouldn’t be a waste of anything. He _is_ a waste right now.

Robb doesn’t answer.

\--

“Do you hate me?” he asks one day, blunt, figuring that he could just get it out of his chest.

“I’m past hating. Do I fault you for taking Winterfell? Of course I do. Do I hate you because you didn’t even know why exactly you were doing it? No. I lost a war because I did everything with honesty, sincerity is the least I could give you.”

“You really were your father’s son,” Theon mutters, not finding it in himself to look at his left. “It’s not a bad thing.”

“Isn’t what you wanted, too?”

Can he even deny it? _More than that, I wanted to be your brother. Maybe it’s the same thing._

“You’re not the only one with regrets,” Robb says one day, and Theon almost recoils because he has never spoken first.

“What could you possibly regret?”

_Except marrying for love,_ Theon guesses, but didn’t he do everything he did because of love, albeit not the same kind?

“Doing the honorable thing. And never having told you in straight terms.”

“Never having told me what?”

Robb moves, with a grace that Theon knows he’ll never have again, before kneeling in front of him. Theon gasps when Robb’s hand touches his cheek. It feels warm, it feels real.

He’s really going crazy.

“I had every reason not to consider Jon my brother. But I never thought he wasn’t, and he knew that. You and me – we weren’t quite the same.”

Theon shakes his head, remembering those stolen moments fumbling in the empty kitchens or the empty stable.

“Nor were you and him,” Robb keeps on. “He wasn’t a hostage, after all, but I should have let you know, that I have never loved you less for it. I regret not having told you that straight. And not because then you wouldn’t have done a very poor job of stabbing me in the back – we shared everything for ten years, you still deserve to hear it.”

He knows he’s crying – he feels salt on his lips and on his tongue, and when he brings up a hand to dry the stupid tears off he feels his missing fingers and it only makes the situation worse. He feels pathetic, but he can’t stop and he can’t bear to look up because even if Robb is just in his head, he doesn’t want to see his face right now. “I should have died with you,” he whispers, his own voice breaking. Maybe if he had died with him he’d be someone deserving to hear what he just heard.

“But you didn’t. And you still have something left – you know, your sister isn’t so bad. But if you can’t live for that, you could live for me instead of wasting your time here.”

Robb’s finger is still running along his cheek and the tenderness of the gesture deals more of a blow than Theon had thought it could. He isn’t sure of what he should do – touch back? Maybe not? He breathes in, opens his eyes and Robb is still there, not a hint of reproach in his eyes.

Then he gasps when Robb’s hand drops down to his breeches.

“No,” he mouths. “Don’t – I’m not –”

“Nothing I haven’t seen already, Theon,” Robb answers, and Theon hopes that he _isn’t_ hallucinating this, because if he is then it means he really is good for nothing. Sure, it’s nothing Robb hasn’t seen already, but when Robb used to jerk him off in the room they shared once in a while during cold nights, his fingers stroking him slowly to completion, he still had been whole.

It’s not that he isn’t anymore – nothing is strictly _gone_ – but his groin didn’t escape Ramsay’s administrations. He has no foreskin anymore (it was flayed, too) and the sight is so wretched that he can’t bring himself to look at his cock for more than the handful of seconds he needs to look at it while pissing. _There isn’t a part of me he left alone_ , Theon thinks, but then Robb’s fingers are skimming over his groin, a butterfly touch, and Theon shivers, realizing that it didn’t feel painful. He remembers actually guiding Robb once, telling him where to put his hand, how to make it feel good (things he had practiced on his own long before Robb started doing the same). He curls his hands into fists, Robb’s hand palming his stomach, wishing it didn’t feel so good. He doesn’t even feel worthy of being touched like this anymore and he hates himself for that. What’s dead shall rise again and stronger, he thinks bitterly, but that _shall_ doesn’t really cover how hard it is to put those words into practice.

“Stop it,” Robb says, moving closer, his thumb at the head of Theon’s cock. “You’re better than that. You can be a lot better than that.”

“How… how do you know it?” Theon breathes out, his voice shaking. It feels different, but he can’t say if it’s better or worse; the bare fact that he’s feeling pleasure is enough to shatter what remains of his coherency.

Robb gives him that sad smile again, his thumb now pressing under the head of Theon’s cock, which is slowly but surely hardening.

“Because I knew _you_. Maybe I could have known better, but I think it was enough. And you knew me too, didn’t you?”

Theon nods, once and then twice, his entire body feeling taut; the more blood rushes down to his groin, the less he thinks about how he’s not supposed to feel this, how he’s not supposed to feel good. He stops trying to stop it, he stops thinking and his fingerless hands land on Robb’s shoulders as Robb’s hand keeps on moving, the strokes getting faster when he’s fully hard.

“Robb,” he whispers, his voice trembling in all the right ways, “Robb – I – _oh_ , I’m –”

“It’s all right – that was for you.”

That does him in, even if he doesn’t grasp the full meaning of the sentence. He feels his frame shaking, and Robb’s free hand closes around his hip; he stills at that, his mouth half-open, his eyes closed because otherwise he can’t do this, not yet. Robb’s hand strokes him again and Theon comes against his palm. He’s quiet now (he used to scream in pleasure, but after months of screaming only in pain, he thinks he can’t do it anymore), he barely moans as he spills against Robb’s soft, long fingers, but he comes harder than he can remember in a long while. Robb strokes him through it all along and Theon can’t seem to stop – the more Robb’s fingers touch him as he orgasms, the more it lasts. Everything beneath his eyelids is turning into white spots, and for a second he almost feels whole again, sensations he had thought forgotten coming back to him. In that second he thinks that nothing has happened, it has all been some nightmare and when he opens his eyes he’ll wake up in his old room in Winterfell, with all his fingers and his toes and everything would feel _right._ Robb will maybe be on the other side of the bed because it’s been colder lately, and they’ll move under the covers and do this all over again. He’ll give Robb demonstration of how good it can be with someone’s mouth and not just with their hands –

And then he opens his eyes. Nothing has been a dream except for his little delusion; he still has seven fingers, his muscles are still not back to what they were once, his teeth still feel all wrong, and Robb is still beautiful and there and _dead_.

“You haven’t _completely_ changed then. Except for letting me take the lead,” Robb says, and his smile is not as sad anymore.

Theon doesn’t pretend he doesn’t know what Robb means.

“I have to go,” Robb says then, his clean hand reaching down and covering Theon’s. It’s the one where he misses two fingers – the one he couldn’t hold a sword with.

“You won’t be back,” Theon says. He knows – the tone is definitive enough.

“This isn’t my place anymore. But it’s yours. Think about how you’re still here. Not everyone would have survived what you did. Then think about what you could do.”

“I’ll miss you. But… at least – will you – there’s something else I always regretted.” He feels bold as he stands up, following Robb. He tries to keep his back straight. “Maybe this is my chance not to regret that anymore.”

“What?”

Robb looks ethereal under the pale winter sun, too much to be real, and Theon tries not to remember how much exactly he _is_ real, in comparison. He takes a step, brings his least maimed hand to Robb’s cheek and kisses him. They _did_ kiss before, but always quick and rushed – never properly. When he kissed girls properly, in his other life, their knees buckled and he used to catch them around the waist; he tries to kiss Robb the same way. It isn’t the same – he had all of his teeth working and he knew where to put his hands back then – but he thinks the feeling is the same, if not _more_ , and when he leans back, Robb is smiling and Theon thinks he understood.

“Goodbye then,” Robb says, and Theon nods, unable to say a word. Then Robb is gone and Theon is left sitting on his bed and pulling up his clothes. He looks at his hand, afraid to find it sticky (afraid to find a definitive proof that he imagined everything), but it’s dry and clean, and it still lacks a finger.

Theon breathes in, deep, after opening the window and letting the chill inside. It’s a lovely day and it feels good to just look out of the window and feel cold on his bare chest. When he closes his hands around the windowsill, he feels seven fingers bending and not ten.

End.


End file.
